Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Founded in the late eighteenth century as a burying ground for the University of North Carolina and the village of Chapel Hill, the cemetery covers 6.98 acres east of the campus. The first recorded interment is George Clarke, a nineteen-year-old student from Bertie County who died on September 28, 1798. Burials are arranged in sections by race and date, with Section B serving as the slave cemetery and the first dated African-American interment there dating to 1853. The Dialectic and Philanthropic Society plots hold cast-iron fences in Gothic Revival style and several marble headstones, ledgers and obelisks carved by stonecutters including George Lauder of Fayetteville. Among those buried here are educators, physicians, engineers, writers and town figures, and the cemetery is regarded as holding one of the most distinguished groups of graves in North Carolina. Its monuments range from antebellum tomb-tables to later family memorials, and the grounds remain shaded by oaks, cedars and hickories.